Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton alliance under strain

Hillary Clinton’s “Hard Choices” caused barely a ripple when her aides sent an early copy to the White House. Privately, President Barack Obama’s aides shrugged when asked what they thought about the book. Some didn’t even crack it open.

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Within hours of the release of Clinton’s book last week, some Obama campaign veterans quietly pushed back on a claim that they considered downright false: Clinton’s contention that the Obama team had wanted to attack vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin for, essentially, being a woman.

“That’s not what happened,” said one campaign veteran, who, like almost everyone else interviewed, asked not to be identified. “The Palin thing was an odd way to put it. The question that was raised with numerous Democratic leaders was whether Gov. Palin had the right experience to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, and it’s the same question that would have been raised regardless of gender.”

That moment from 2008 has become a Clinton talking point as she embarks on a book tour that many see as a prelude for a presidential run — one that will further test the tenuous alliance between the two former rivals and their loyalists, particularly those who haven’t completely let go of past slights.

“There are many reasons why people are opposed to political figures,” Clinton told Christiane Amanpour during a CNN town hall Tuesday night, when asked whether she thinks some of the opposition to Obama is about race. “I felt when I ran in ’08 that there were people who were opposed to me because I was a woman.”

White House aides acknowledge that there will have to be a high tolerance for her creating distance with the administration. They want the Democratic nominee to win, no matter who it is, and if that means spelling out differences with the president, then so be it. But they don’t expect that to happen for a while because, at this point, Clinton will need to show that she was part of a successful presidency and undermining him wouldn’t help.

Still, for Obama’s aides and outside advisers, while the book itself was largely unobjectionable, the intensity surrounding the tour to promote it — replete with the campaign-style town hall and a sophisticated rollout — has been a neon sign reminding them that Clinton is increasingly seen by Democrats as their future.

For Clinton, she must decide how tightly to embrace a president with eroding approval ratings. Her book tour has offered hints of the balance she’s attempting to strike. Clinton has defended Obama’s controversial deportation policy, but also made clear that she warned the White House about the risk of not arming Syrian rebels. She has said she was never disappointed with the president while working for him, but she did disagree with him at times.

“You’re not going to agree — I don’t care who you are — with everything any president does,” Clinton said at the CNN event.

The White House knows the attention in Washington eventually will turn almost exclusively to Clinton if she were to run for president, overshadowing Obama’s own agenda. But it’s not a new phenomenon for the West Wing, given Clinton’s high-profile role in the Cabinet and her ambitious speaking schedule in recent months.

They’ve been doing this dance since the end of the 2008 Democratic primary, with each looking warily at the other, trying not to overtly step on the other’s toes but occasionally slipping up. The start of another presidential cycle presents another awkward and potentially frustrating twist in the relationship. A recent CNN poll showed voters trusted Clinton more than Obama on potential handling of various foreign and domestic policy issues.

But both Obama and Clinton, as well as aides, have sought to emphasize their personal closeness and mutual investment in the other’s success.

“We have been able to have a no-surprises culture, and that is rooted in the fact that we have very deep personal relationships,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser. “She is going to do what she is going to do, and she is going to say what she is going to say, but generally the lines of communication are such that there are no surprises on the big issues that come up.”

In her book, Clinton talks about forming an “unexpected partnership” with Obama during her tenure working for him. In an interview last month on ABC’s “Live with Kelly and Michael,” Obama said they remain “really, really good friends.”

“Hillary and I, we’re buddies,” Obama said. “I think because we ran in the longest primary in history, and our staffs were doing battle politically, the perception was this was always a marriage of convenience when she came in as secretary of state. I’ve always admired her. As soon as she got here, she couldn’t have been more effective, more loyal.”

Obama and Clinton still occasionally meet for lunch, as they did earlier this month at the White House, and they talk with “some regularity,” Rhodes said. Senior aides stay in contact, talking frequently about midterm campaign strategy and giving a courtesy heads-up when Obama or Clinton makes news that affects the other. Philippe Reines, a senior Clinton aide, has attended sessions at the White House with other foreign policy communicators since leaving the State Department.